E. Cartwright Jenkins, dramatic editor of the Star, was distinctly
displeased with life as a whole and with humanity in general that
morning. His professional dignity had been subjected to a series of
frontal and flank attacks of great violence for nearly twenty-four hours
and the final insult had been handed out by the managing editor who had
just left the little cubby hole designated by a painted sign as the
“dramatic department.”
E. Cartwright had read Jimmy’s oleaginous epistle three times at the
breakfast table the morning before and had left his home in a fine glow
of self-approval. In fancy he walked upon the misty mountain tops of
high achievement until he reached the Star office and then he found
himself hurled suddenly into the well known slough of despond. Billy
Parsons, the advertising manager, who met him in the elevator, started
it.
“Well, old man,” Billy, said laughingly, “I see they got to you for a
home-run this morning with all the bases full.”
E. Cartwright had bristled at this and had expressed himself as not
comprehending the esoteric significance of the allusion. Billy had then
become more specific.
“They put it over on you,” he replied. “That press agent fellow with
Olga Stephano, I mean.”
“Put it over on me?” the dramatic editor had returned. “I don’t exactly
understand what you mean.”
“Say, old dear,” Billy had sarcastically responded, “it’s a worse case
than I thought it was at first. You’d ought to see a doctor.”
E. Cartwright, who abhorred slang and those who used it, had become
quite indignant at this and had insisted upon a clear explanation of
what Billy Parsons meant. The latter gentleman obliged him with one. He
pointed out, with great clarity, the trick that Jimmy Martin had played
on the astute and dignified dramatic editor. He dwelt upon the number of
times the name of Madame Stephano had been cunningly inserted into the
correspondence and proved that the whole affair was a carefully
calculated scheme for the exploitation of that lady.
The blinders of self-esteem having thus been torn from the eyes of the
dramatic editor, that gentleman developed a decided distaste for further
discussion of the subject and immured himself in his cramped office
where he devoted himself to bitter rumination. Throughout the day his
fellow laborers in the field of journalism seemed to take a malicious
delight in playfully taunting him. On the way home for dinner he had met
the dramatic editor of the rival Inquirer and that worthy had added to
his fury by remarking, with a twinkle in his eye:
“That was a mighty interesting symposium on Stephano you ran this
morning, Jenkins.”
At dinner he startled his sedate and shrinking wife by launching into a
profane and pungent diatribe on the subject of press agents and
announced his determination to start a nation-wide movement for their
suppression and final extermination. He declared, in loud and ringing
tones, that nothing but total annihilation of the entire tribe would at
all satisfy his wishes in the matter.
The sting of the affair still rankled in his breast when he came down to
the office on the following morning. When Nathan, the managing editor,
looked in on him he was viciously assailing the dramatic page of a New
York Sunday newspaper with a large pair of shears and wishing for a
moment, as he clipped out items of theatrical information, that it was
one Jimmy Martin instead of an innocent sheet of paper that he was
attacking.
“Say, Jenkins,” Nathan remarked casually, “I’ve got a little request to
make of your Miss Slosson who’s running this damned pie contest,—it
closes today, you know,—is getting swamped downstairs and has sent out
an S.O.S. to this floor for assistance. There’s nobody around yet but
you. I wish you’d drop down there for an hour or so and give her a hand.
Just as soon as one of the cubs show up I’ll send him down to relieve
you.”
E. Cartwright reeled under this final blow to his dignity. The ends of
his iron-grey walrus moustache dropped a full half inch as he looked up,
bewildered.
“Pie contest—Miss Slosson,” he mumbled. “What could I possibly do in
connection with that, or with her?”
“Oh, just help her and her assistant unwrap and tag some of the
entries,” replied Nathan in a matter-of-fact tone, as he turned quickly
to suppress a smile and hurried out of the tiny room.
E. Cartwright uttered a low moan expressive of profound and abysmal woe
as he slipped on his coat and prepared to descend to Miss Slosson’s
department.
* * * * *
Jimmy and his fellow conspirator found Miss Slosson in her office almost
completely hidden by parcels containing pies. They did not notice E.
Cartwright at first. That high authority on the spoken and written drama
was in the throes of unutterable and indescribable mental anguish at a
table fifty feet away untying innumerable bundles and humming a hymn of
hate directed at newspaper work in general and soulless managing editors
in particular.
The small colored boy, grunting under the weight of the wooden box,
deposited the burden on the table.
“Oh, there you are, Mr. Martin,” gurgled Miss Slosson, coming forward
and surveying the box with interest, “and what have we here?”
“That’s the little old pie I told you I’d have the madame send on,”
replied Jimmy glibly. “She made a mistake and sent it to the theatre. It
just came by express a half an hour ago right through from Chicago.”
“Isn’t that perfectly wonderful,” rhapsodized the pie editor. “What did
dear Madame Stephano say when you spoke to her over the phone?”
Jimmy paused for a moment before he replied. He had caught a glimpse of
the Star’s dramatic editor who had turned and was approaching them. He
clutched Tom Wilson’s arm.
“What did she say,” he said abstractedly. “What did she say? Why she
said—she said she’d turn down a Drama League luncheon and go right out
in the kitchen and slip into a gingham apron, and believe me if you knew
how much she thinks of the Drama League, you’d know that was some
concession.”
E. Cartwright hadn’t seen them yet. He was apparently almost oblivious
of his surroundings as he walked slowly towards Miss Slosson.
“I realize that,” the pie editor was saying. “She has a great, big,
generous nature, I’m sure and to think of her being so domesticated,
too. Oh, Mr. Martin, I suppose you know Mr. Jenkins, our dramatic
editor. He’s kindly volunteered to help me in the closing hours of the
contest.”
Jimmy straightened up and assumed his most ingratiating smile. He had
met the distinguished critic only once, several years before, and he was
fairly certain that he would not be remembered.
“I had the honor of an introduction several seasons ago,” he said
suavely, “but it is possible that Mr. Jenkins does not recall me.”
E. Cartwright had given an unconscious start at the sound of the name
“Martin,” but he seemed to have no conscious knowledge of Jimmy’s
identity. He smiled sadly.
“I don’t seem to place you,” he remarked with a woebegone attempt at
civility.
“Mr. Martin is Madame Stephano’s advance manager,” broke in Miss
Slosson. “The dear madame has entered a pie in our little contest
through him.”
Mr. Jenkins’ facial aspect underwent an instantaneous change. He
narrowed his eyes and corrugated his brows and gave other external
indications of rapidly mounting wrath. Also his cheeks paled, and it may
be further stated that his rather gangling frame became suddenly taut
and vibrant. He eyed Jimmy for fully ten seconds and then turned to Miss
Slosson.
“It is my duty to inform you, madame,” he said in a voice that was tense
with emotion, “that this person is a press agent who will use you for
his own selfish ends—a paid hireling of an unscrupulous management which
has only one purpose in mind—deceit and rank trickery.”
Jimmy started to expostulate, but Tom Wilson gave him a vicious elbow
jab which effectively cut off any utterance on his part. Miss Slosson
smiled serenely.
“Don’t be too hard on him, dear Mr. Jenkins,” she remonstrated. “He has
been a great help in our effort to raise the general tone of culinary
excellence. He represents a most estimable lady, and if she gets a
little publicity out of it she deserves it after all the trouble she has
gone to—baking a pie with her own hands and sending it on here all the
way from Chicago. We mustn’t be too selfish.”
“I warn you, madame, that there is fraud here some place,” persisted the
dramatic editor, “downright fraud and deception. These gentlemen have a
depraved talent for that sort of thing.”
“Nonsense,” broke in the pie editor beckoning to an office boy whose job
it was to open such entries as were encased in substantial packages. As
the youngster assailed the box she chirruped on. “I’m using another
picture of the clear lady in tomorrow’s paper, Mr. Martin, and I’ll
announce the arrival of her contribution in the opening paragraph. I’m
just crazy to see it. Quite a large box, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” murmured Jimmy. “She certainly seems to have done the thing up
brown.”
He was the picture of serene self-satisfaction as he watched the lid
coming off the box. The prospect of triumphing over E. Cartwright a
second time filled him with an almost ecstatic joy.
When the lid was removed Mr. Jenkins darted toward the box and pulled
out the tufts of crumpled newspapers. He carefully unfolded one and
looked at it. Jimmy caught Tom Wilson’s eye at this juncture and winked
his off eye prodigiously. E. Cartwright, upon observing the heading and
the date line in the paper, threw it down impatiently and began
nervously to chew the ends of his moustache.
“We’ve got old George B. Grouch’s goat all right,” confided Jimmy behind
his hand.
Miss Slosson untied the string and lifted out the pie which was tightly
swathed in a piece of old linen. She undid the wrapping slowly while the
interested spectators gathered close around her. The careful young woman
in the bake shop had placed a piece of cardboard over the top of the
deep china dish, and when this was removed Miss Slosson positively
bubbled with delight as she caught sight of the golden brown crust of
the wonderful pie.
“It looks perfectly heavenly,” she remarked. “Perfectly heavenly.”
“A masterpiece,” broken in the hitherto silent Mr. Wilson.
“I told you she’d bake one that would win in a walk,” was Jimmy’s
contribution to the glad chorus of acclaim.
E. Cartwright didn’t have a word to say. He stood with his hands on his
hips watching the two press agents with a look that still betrayed
cynical distrust.
“Won’t you please put it over there on that little table all by itself,
Mr. Jenkins,” said Miss Slosson. “It certainly deserves a place of
honor.”
Mr. Jenkins grunted and hesitated for a moment. He was too chivalrous at
heart, however, to refuse to obey a lady’s behest no matter how much
humiliation he might suffer. He grasped both sides of the pie-dish
firmly, lifted it high in the air and began to turn. Jimmy was looking
at him with ill-concealed delight. As he watched a look of intense agony
spread over the dramatic editor’s face. The next instant that gentleman
dropped the pie with a sharp cry of pain.
“It’s hot,” he screamed, “red hot!”
The dish smashed into a hundred pieces on the counter and the
surrounding atmosphere was filled with flying fragments of pie. Jimmy
felt something warm and sticky on his face and he noticed with dismay
that the front of Miss Slosson’s silk dress was a sorry looking mess.
Tom Wilson’s clothes were smeared with debris, too. E. Cartwright was
wiping apple juice out of both eyes and uttering words that caused the
pulse beats of Madame Stephano’s personal representative to diminish
almost to the vanishing point.
“A pair of damned fakirs,” he shouted. “Baked in Chicago, eh, and
shipped on here by express! It hasn’t been out of the oven an hour.
Thought they’d put one over on us again, did they? I know ’em. I know
’em.”
The tragic climax of Jimmy’s little three act comedy came with such
unexpected suddenness that he stood in the midst of the tumult and the
shouting like one transfixed. It was a rout, an utter and complete
defeat, the most disastrous and the most humiliating of his career. In a
flash he pictured it becoming a classic anecdote that would be bandied
to and fro by his professional brethren in Pullman smoking rooms and
theatre offices for years without number.
He looked up and about him. Enemies were surging toward him from all
directions apparently bent on his destruction. And then he remembered
Tom Wilson. He turned around. That worthy had departed as if on the
wings of the morning. The dishevelled and distraught editor had
apparently exhausted his vocabulary of vituperation and was approaching
him with a savage look in his eye flanked on one side by a distinguished
looking gentleman with a most authoritative manner who had rushed to the
scene from a nearby office. Jimmy realized that it was no place or time
for heroics. He turned and fled precipitately down an unencumbered aisle
in the general direction of the open air.
He caught up with Tom Wilson two blocks down the avenue. That gentleman
was still going strong and seemed to need no pace-maker.
“The first bet I ever overlooked, Tom,” he puffed as he swung alongside.
“What’ll we do?”
“What’ll we do?” facetiously echoed the other, gripping him firmly by
the arm and dragging him along. “Where’ll we hide, you mean?”
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